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Relitigation after contested custody and visitation evaluations
The Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
|January 1, 1986
Summary
Highly adversarial families experience significantly higher rates of custody relitigation post-divorce. Mother custody cases also show increased child support relitigation compared to other arrangements.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Family Law
- Sociology
Background:
- Postdivorce adjustment is complex and often involves ongoing legal disputes.
- Custody, visitation, and child support relitigation are key indicators of adjustment challenges.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess relitigation rates as a measure of postdivorce adjustment.
- To compare relitigation frequency in highly adversarial versus non-contested custody cases.
- To examine differences in relitigation rates across custody types (mother, father, joint) and dispute types (custody, visitation, child support).
Main Methods:
- A comparative study design was employed.
- Samples included highly adversarial families undergoing psychiatric evaluation for contested custody/visitation (n=58) and control groups with non-contested custody (mother: n=43, father: n=30, joint: n=54).
- A separate sample of postdivorce dispute evaluation families (n=46) and controls (n=36) were also analyzed for visitation relitigation.
Main Results:
- Predivorce adversarial families showed a significantly higher rate of custody relitigation (19%) than control families.
- Mother custody cases had a higher rate of child support relitigation compared to father or joint custody.
- Postdivorce visitation dispute families exhibited higher visitation relitigation rates than control families.
Conclusions:
- High predivorce conflict predicts higher postdivorce custody relitigation.
- Child support relitigation is more common in mother custody arrangements.
- Visitation disputes are more frequent in families seeking postdivorce evaluations for such issues.